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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28879758">Dog Star</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ludling/pseuds/ludling'>ludling</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Home at the End of the World [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, I know I said I wouldn't, and felt very easy compared to Language, but this was fun</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 07:42:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,973</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28879758</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ludling/pseuds/ludling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Griphook doesn't free Hermione. An alternate ending to AHATEOTW that I promised myself I wouldn't write. And yet here we are.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hermione Granger/Bellatrix Black Lestrange</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Home at the End of the World [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1640674</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>62</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Dog Star</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I look for uncomplicated hymns</p><p>but love has none"</p><p><em>Live or Die</em> - Anne Sexton</p><p> </p><p>They were torturing muggles in the lower halls again. Greybane had come up with a new technique last week, or so one of Hermione's ever-rotating minders had told her, that involved growing all the victim's bones until the skin - purple and tight under the pressure - simply burst like an overripe plum. The Flock was eager to test this new method. They had a reputation to uphold after all.</p><p>Hermione made herself deaf to the pleas and half-swallowed shrieks as she descended the stairs to the large stone hall that served the old owners as a kitchen. The huge stainless steel fridge had broken months ago. Couldn't handle the influx of so many powerful magical beings. But the muggle family who had lived here (happily, Hermione had guessed by their photos) had kept a decent cellar, so even now there were big bottles of olive oil, jars of pickled vegetables, a mountain of potatoes, and, of course, the wine stores.</p><p>Hermione navigated the remnants of last night's feast absentmindedly. They'd roasted a wild pig. Most of it was still left. There were other bones that she did not let herself look at for too long. <em>That was the way to do it,</em> she'd have said if anyone ever asked her. <em>Keep your gaze light.</em> Rule Numero Uno in her never to be published 'Rules for a Perfect Horcrux Adventurer'.</p><p>She fried her breakfast of potatoes in silence. There was a moment where she considered finding a glass, but it was easier to drink her wine straight out of the bottle. It was insultingly good.</p><p>Rule number two: always be slightly inebriated if you can manage.</p><p>She drank in long measured pulls. When her bottle and pan were empty she burped, and allowed herself a rare moment of looking around.</p><p>Even this early, the vast stone kitchen of the villa was already full of fresh golden light. There were only two pictures on the whitewashed walls. An oil portrait of an elderly woman (badly done, a 1970's modernist thing) and an older oil of a brown horse in what was obviously the courtyard outside. Hermione stood, leaving her rubbish among the existing mess and walked towards the painting.</p><p>It was beautiful. The artist had taken care to render the strong muscles in the horses thighs, the glint of afternoon sun on its shining pelt.</p><p>The closer Hermione got to the painting the more the ridges of paint reflected the light. The animal's eye seen from the profile was black and wet, at first glance perfectly alive with animal intelligence. But the closer she got the more she thought she saw a sliver of white. The edge of madness. And what of the hand holding the gleaming leather harness? The artist had taken less care to render this, but his broad brush-strokes still revealed a gloved hand, brutish and workman-like from one angle, delicate and controlled from another. And that sliver of white - the reflection of the iron bit in the creatures mouth. The whiff of doom.</p><p><em>Looks like you're all dressed up,</em> Hermione thought, so close now that her nose nearly touched the valleys and ridges of paint. <em>Looks like you're dressed and ready to lose your shit pet.</em></p><p>It was her twenty-third, and last day in Italy.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The call comes while Hermione is contemplating her own reflection in the fountain that stands behind the house. Dark Mark calls come so unexpectedly that she had learned long ago to let herself be picked up and fluttered like a leaf along with them. Anything else would get her dosage increased while the Flock traveled, and left her sick and groggy for days after.</p><p>Hermione had her own mark. It didn't have half the artistry of the skull wrapped in a snake. Just a little crosshatch of numbers below the faded scars that branded her a <em>'Mudblood'</em> in large childish scrawl. The numbers by contrast were tiny and precise - legible to anyone with the right Ministry clearance. They marked her as someone of low blood, but property of a high ranking official. The little 'H' at the end had been added later. Sometimes Hermione still pretended it stood for her name. Not for the increasingly large class of people the Ministry created for 'worthy' Death Eaters every year. Their perfect insurance policies against the Resistance - if they survived.</p><p>The tattoo burned, faintly at first, and then stronger as Hermione ignored it.</p><p>Her reflection was especially fascinating today. There'd been a slip up in her dosage, and she'd cut her hair off down to the scalp with a kitchen knife before The Flock had departed England on this assignment. <em>'A new look for my new home!'</em> She'd giggled to Narcissa who did not find it amusing in the slightest. She'd tutted over the nicks and bits of clotted blood all over Hermione's scalp. Bellatrix had sent for her, Hermione had later heard. It was as much as she ever got from the older witch these days.</p><p><em>If she looks at me all her good fortune will end,</em> Hermione thought to herself for the thousandth time. <em>I am the price.</em></p><p>Narcissa had regrown her hair of course, but she'd been distracted, and the new growth was a shade darker than Hermione's previous hair. It was softer too, and curled slightly because she hadn't yet been able to neglect brushing it for months at a time.</p><p>So reflected in the water there was a stranger from a long ago past. It was how she'd looked at Hogwarts, a little scruffy sure, but still fundamentally okay. Her face was a bit rounder - she did little else but eat and sleep - and there was a greasy sheen from the potatoes around her mouth.</p><p><em>Other girls would go to pieces with a bit more glam Granger,</em> the voice Hermione still pairs with Pansy Parkinson's mean face coos. Hermione begins to laugh. <em>Other girls would have lost twenty pounds Pansy, rather than gained them, other girls would have bewailed their fates in clothes tailored for them - other girls wouldn't have survived a horcrux in the first place.</em></p><p>A shadow falls across her face. She stops laughing abruptly and looks up.</p><p>
  <em>Ah.</em>
</p><p>They've sent Pole and Yardley again. Two prospective converts to the Flock. Pretty desperate if they've been saddled with Granger-duty.</p><p>"Come on" The one she thinks is Pole says. He's not a day over seventeen, spotty-faced and clearly hates her. Yardley is older, veering near middle-age, and even more embarrassed by this task.</p><p>"I'm busy" She says, not because her reflection is that interesting, but because it's nice to lay in the sun and eat potatoes and drink olive oil. "Come back later." She sees the flash of anger that passes over Pole's face before he masters himself. She thinks he might hit her. She can't quite hope that he does - not while the tonic is in her system - but she can push him in that direction nonetheless. She rests her cheek on the warm stones again and closes her eyes.</p><p>"Whole regiment's moving out" Yardley says "We've been ordered back home."</p><p>Hermione opens one eye to peer at him. Yardley's hate for her is a slower thing. Deeper. She thinks maybe one night, if he's really drunk, she could goad him into shoving her. Maybe if she angled it right - but the fog descends and she can think no further along that route.</p><p>"And don't think we haven't noticed you 'ent had your medicine yet." He says, now with something like fatherly amusement creeping into his voice.</p><p>Ah yes. Her tonic. A nasty little invention of either Slughorn's or Snape's. She wavers between them depending on the day. Both of her old teachers are dead anyway. But not before helping construct this last cage.</p><p><em>If only I'd just done the job properly the first time.</em> In Bellatrix's study that day had been her last moments of real freedom. The thought is as worn as <em>I am the price</em>. If it were a piece of cloth she'd be frightened of touching it. It would fall apart in her hands.</p><p>Yardley has produced a little glass bottle from the folds of his robe. It's the small kind they sometimes give her when they travel. Just a top up before her big monthly dose. It's sealed with a familiar bit of puce wax. No tampering ensured. The flavor had changed slightly after the they arrived in Italy. Hermione wondered whether the last maker had survived her haircut. On her good days she feels vaguely sorry that someone else was hurt because of her. On her bad days - <em>well</em>.</p><p>Pole pulls her to her feet. He makes a show of it, but his hand is careful around her arm. No one is keen to be executed before lunch. Yardley meanwhile has peeled off the seal with the edge of one dirty fingernail, and stepped forward.</p><p>"Now say '<em>ah'</em> like a good mudgirl"</p><p>Pole snickers. Hermione hates them both so completely and suddenly that it paralyzes her.</p><p>She says "Ah,"</p><p>The potion tastes sweet, like pineapples, and Hermione wonders once again who Bellatrix has brewing these for her. Who is pouring the neat little wax seals of the lip?</p><p>Who is keeping her from her most basic human right?</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>By the time the Flock is assembled to travel the golden morning has been blotted out by rain clouds.</p><p>Hermione stands alone near the back, behind Bellatrix's small group of astrologers, and looks over into the grove of fruit trees. Her traveling case has three peaches, four apples and an armload of cherries from the over-ripe orchard, but she already wishes for more. She wishes they'd finally forget her one of these years, and she could wander back into that blue shade and eat warm, sweet fruits until the potion wore off. She'd never bother anyone again if she could do that.</p><p>She is still staring at the trees when Bellatrix finally emerges. She turns her head only in time to glimpse the edge of a black coat, the flick of tightly pinned hair. Bellatrix's lieutenants surround her so thickly most times that Hermione is lucky to glimpse this much.</p><p>The last time she'd seen Bellatrix alone had been in Belgium. Voldemort had wanted some of his generals to attend a gala for their political faction there. The Flock had mostly stayed behind, as this event for once didn't call for mass-extermination of muggles. They must have been there in the years immediately following The Dark Lord's accession, because the hotel had an old room plan for them. Hermione had found herself facing Bellatrix across a shared dressing room.</p><p>Bellatrix had looked very fine. Healthier and more beautiful than ever. Her teeth weren't stained anymore. Her hair was glossy and her dress was black and clean. Hermione meanwhile, had never been more conscious of the new fat on her hips, and of her snag-filled hair, and of how even through the numbing of her medicine - of her rage. She had retreated before the sight of this perfectly happy witch could choke her. Bellatrix had not followed.</p><p>"-and we must remember. The good work we are doing will pave the road for our children-"</p><p>Hermione tunes out again. Bellatrix must have made thousands of these speeches in the last decade. Hours of her dancing along the same essential vein: the glorious coming future, the important work still to be done, and always, always, stamping out Potter and the Resistance to its roots.</p><p>She looks at the orchard once more. A bird is dashing in and out of the canopy. <em>What a splendid life,</em> the voice she thinks of as Luna whispers. <em>Just all alone in the great, sweet world. All alone, and free to die.</em></p><p>Someone takes her elbow. Yardley again. His hand nearly covers the whole back of her arm. He winks at her.She does not wink back. She wonders what it would take for him to do something irreversible. Something she can't name, can't even think of with the tonic swirling through her system. <em>He'd have to be really angry,</em> she thinks. <em>After all it would be his life gone as well as mine.</em></p><p>Then, with a plunging, squeezing sensation and a loud '<em>pop</em>', the Flock is home.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The ancient country hall the Flock takes over in Berkshire is an established Death Eater stronghold. There are no muggles to hunt over the grounds and string up in the dungeons. Accordingly, Hermione feels morale drop after the first day. The meeting they had been called to is a big one from what Hermione can gather. It would unite everyone of Voldemort's generals in one place for the first time in years.</p><p><em>They must have caught someone important,</em> Hermione realizes, and feels her stomach drop to somewhere around her knees. Rules for a Perfect Horcrux Adventurer, rule number three: it never gets easier watching old friends die.</p><p>But the Flock at large, for all they claim to be the cleverest regiment, don't seem to realize this. The mood stays low until Bellatrix announces a feast for the next night. She glows in the candlelight of the old Tudor house, and gives a little half-curtsy as her regiment cheers. Hermione knows that something of a cult has sprung up around her in the last years. Rodolphus' death at the Battle of Hogwarts made a convenient widow out of her. She cultivates her image of old threaded blood. There are little cards printed with her moving portrait, and Hermione has overheard that there is a trend in Hogwarts for female students to make wishes over her picture.</p><p><em>She's good at this,</em> Hermione thinks, looking at herself in the small cloudy mirror of the room that is to be hers. Unicorns and noble ladies covered the tapestried walls behind her. <em>No that's not it,</em> she thinks, looking at the woman sitting by the creature, hand resting on its shining nape. <em>She was born for it.</em></p><p>She sleeps fitfully and wakes late on the day of the promised feast. The light is not like Italy- but has a cool, blue quality, even in summer. Hermione pulls on an old grey jumper. She puts and apple from her case in one pocket, and a handful of cherries in the other. Time to keep her gaze light.</p><p>Most of the Flock are in the great hall of the house, having late breakfasts, and talking over various scrolls, maps and projects. At the largest table, Bellatrix, resplendent in black, surrounded by her lieutenants, deep in conversation. <em>She used to wipe jam from my face, and smile as she did it,</em> Hermione thinks and winces. <em>No, none of that. </em>She swings her gaze away and considers the hall again.</p><p><em>It's odd,</em> Hermione thinks. She's known these people longer than her Hogwarts classmates, but no one here would dream of waving hello or saying a friendly word to her. She's just there. Like a ghost.</p><p>She sits in the largest bit of empty space along one of the long wooden tables. She wants to go out of the house, but experience has taught her to wait. When everyone is good and drunk at the feast she'll test out the wards they've set up for her this time. The Flock's trappers are her closest neighbors. They ignore her, continuing their argument about the best way to enhance a rope snare.</p><p><em>Incarcifors</em>, Hermione thinks absently then frowns. The thought was strangely clear, with no voice to intone it. <em>It was my voice,</em> she realizes.</p><p>She angles her head slightly so she can see the trappers better. Their leader, an older witch named Cecil, sits the closest to Hermione. Her team is mostly made up of men Hermione's own age, but educated at Durmstrang by their lilting accents and blonde coloring. They are a good looking team. Bellatrix arranged it that way on purpose. The Flock is the regiment anyone with half an ounce of ambition wants to join for their compulsory service. Greyback's Horde isn't half bad if you're more interested in contaminants, but in all other fields, Bellatrix leads.</p><p>"But if the prey runs-" One of the trappers begins.</p><p>"If the prey runs wouldn't it be nice, for once, to just leave the hunt be?" Hermione is as surprised as any of them to find that she's the one speaking "You've hunted half the magical creatures the islands have to near extinction in under a decade."</p><p>The trappers, and a few other Flock members around them pause their work to stare at Hermione. They look like people who've suddenly heard the household dog speak.</p><p>"Sorry lads - time for Miss Granger's potion" Yardley says affably, appearing at her shoulder and sitting down before she has the chance to move away. He passes the little glass bottle to her. It's cool in her hands, and she breaks the wax seal almost without thinking.</p><p>"To your health" Yardley says in a staged voice, toasting her with his own cup of tea. Beyond him, Hermione sees the trappers hiding their smirks. <em>I'm smarter than all of you put together,</em> she thinks with the same old hateful rush.<em> You stupid lot of-</em></p><p>She downs half her potion in one gulp, already anticipating losing this clean blade of anger and-</p><p>It tastes like nothing.</p><p>She drinks the other half of the bottle slower, licking her lips, and trying to ignore Yardley watching her. The trappers have forgotten about her and have gone back to their discussion. How many conversations between real people has Bellatrix's little eccentricity interrupted all these years? Half a dozen at most. The medicine kept her docile.</p><p><em>Coloured water.</em> Hermione thinks again. This isn't her potion.</p><p><em>Who changed it?</em> She turns the little bottle in her hand. The wax seal was the same as ever.</p><p>"I'll be taking that" Yardley says, already lifting it out of her fingers.</p><p><em>I'll kill you - you foul old prick,</em> Hermione stares at her empty hands. She could think about hurting someone! Experimentally she thinks about the grove of fruit-trees, about taking a rope and tying it to a cherry tree, and putting her neck though it-</p><p>"Excuse me"</p><p>She gets away from Yardley and out of the hall as quickly as she dares. The tonic should have dulled her wits by now. That's always how it went after these big monthly doses. She should be getting ready to sleep for hours. When she reaches the dark corridor she throws up in a decorative vase by the door. Bits of potato and spit stick to her face. She wipes it roughly, feeling cold and clammy, but so very, very wide awake. <em>She is free</em>. Someone had bungled the tonic - on purpose? Who knew? The only thing that mattered was-</p><p>"Are you alright?"</p><p>Hermione looks up, tugging the frizzy strands of her hair back from her face.</p><p>Bellatrix is lit from behind by the light still coming from the hall. Her face is in shadow, so Hermione has no idea what expression is on her face. The edges of her hair, and muscled arms, and filmy skirt glow.</p><p>Bellatrix starts as if to step closer "Hermione-"</p><p>Hermione turns and tears upstairs.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>She does sleep after all. It’s better than pacing the small space of her room, pulling at her hair, and warding off a panic attack. </p><p>When she dreams it is, as always, of the meadow. It hasn’t changed since she first saw it- the flowers are still in bloom, and eerie twilight cloaks everything in shades of lilac, and she hears the occasional snap of twigs that let her know Bellatrix’s younger self patrols the perimeter. She hasn’t seen the girl herself in a few years, and for the most part she’s glad of it. She isn’t the little child of their first meeting. She’s grown in the spaces between Hermione’s dreams, and is now a teenager, sullen and hulking. Her teeth have become as sharp as Lord Voldemort’s. It all means something sinister, that much Hermione can guess for herself, but she hasn’t quite brought herself to care yet.</p><p>It’s dusk by the time she wakes again, and the low beat of drums reach her, even in her far-off bedroom. </p><p><em>Ah,</em> Hermione thinks, blinking up at the stitched canopy. <em>One of those feasts.</em></p><p>She should stay out of sight. The Flock was excellent at turning a blind eye to her existence. But a good and proper Bacchanalian feast got everyone’s blood up. Best to keep a low profile. Bellatrix had said so herself, back when she thought of the first one of these, ignoring Hermione’s horrified expression. <em>‘They have to let it out somewhere pet’</em> She’d said, stroking Hermione’s naked arm thoughtfully. Hermione’s nipple had pebbled as if on command, and she hated herself, hated this life for the thousandth time-</p><p><em>‘We can’t all have one of you’</em> Bellatrix had said, and smiling, bent to take Hermione’s nipple in her mouth. Hermione had gasped at the soft bite of her teeth. <em>But you don’t have me,</em> she’d thought even as she sighed. <em>That’s why you never leave me alone, why you don’t let me cut my own apples, or brew my own potions anymore.</em> This had been a few years before the tonic. Hermione often wonders if she would have tried a little harder to resist in those first years if she could see the shape of her cage to come.</p><p>The early years. For the first time Hermione realises she’s clear enough to be ashamed of herself. She’d given up. She’d let Bellatrix tell her Harry was dead, and to put aside any foolish ideas of fighting to the last. Hermione had let herself be wrapped, grief-stricken and dumb, in soft silks, and the dark center of Bellatrix’s love. She’d drunk champagne with muggle torturers, swayed at candlelit parties, had almost resigned herself to it when-</p><p>Finding out Harry was alive had been both the best and worst moment of her new life.</p><p>She’d stared at his picture, grainy and shot with a overtaxed telescopic lens, on the cover of the <em>Daily Prophet</em>, and felt her appetite leave her. She wishes she could remember what she had said to Bellatrix at the start of the breakfast. It was after all the last time she ever spoke to her.</p><p>The drums downstairs are getting faster. They must be bringing the muggle tributes. It's a miracle in itself that they still had young and pretty muggles to find. Hermione has heard a rumour that there were agents all over Eastern Europe looking for striking faces. Romania was a current favourite source.</p><p>She considers her clothes. A thick-knit jumper and an old ugly skirt. The wardrobe in this new room will be as full of clothes as every other room. She’d openly stopped wearing the stuff after the picture in the Prophet. She went through the plundered muggle houses and found ugly fabrics, boxy cuts, anything to keep Bellatrix’s hands off her. </p><p>It hadn’t worked.</p><p>Not at first anyway. Bellatrix in the early years would have wanted her dressed even in a potato sack. What bothered her was the not speaking. She’d prod and bite and tease Hermione. And she’d get gasps and moans that way sure. But even if she yelled- even if she wheedled and made thoughtful low arguments - Hermione couldn’t speak to her. it was as though shame had struck her dumb.</p><p>The tonic helped. It arrived with the second set of pictures of the Resistance’s camps, and it shut Hermione’s mouth even more firmly. Some days she managed not to look Bellatrix in the eye at all.</p><p>And after a few months Bellatrix seemed to tire of trying. She let Hermione sleep alone, she no longer forced her to sit at her right hand at feasts, and she stopped trying to catch her eye. It was worse than the <em>Prophet</em> pictures, a thousand times worse, but Hermione made herself live with it - this smallest atonement that she could offer. Had made herself live with it all these years.</p><p>The wardrobe opens easily. Hermione chooses quickly then shuts it again. The outfit takes longer than she likes to assemble. She picks a bit of lint off her shoulder. Touches the length of her hair once more. She looks like one of the Flock. The sweep of the dress is reminiscent of a birds wing. Not in flight. On a table. Being dissected.</p><p><em>But you are a member of the Flock,</em> she thinks, staring at the woman reflected in the glass. <em>No use pretending Granger. No use in hiding from that anymore. You’ve spent more years here than you ever did at Hogwarts or at home.</em> </p><p>“That’s why you know how to finish them” Hermione shivers at the sound of her own voice. “That’s why it’s your job to kill them all.”</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>A screaming muggle girl is Hermione’s first brush with a proper feast in years.</p><p>She’s pretty, in an elfin teenage sort of way, and she runs straight into Hermione as she reaches the lower floors. Her dress is torn, and she’s shivering. She breathes and blinks rapidly, taking in Hermione, taking a few stumbling steps back.</p><p>”Please” She says in thickly accented English and a wavering voice “Please help me.”</p><p>Hermione can hear other screams, other voices, in the great hall behind her. Maybe they’ve already started the hunt, but Hermione guesses that this one just got away a little early.  She rubs the girls’ arms gently. “What’s your name?”</p><p>”Ludmijla” The girl chokes out. Behind her there’s the sound of footsteps. The sound of laughing voices. “<em>Please help me</em>”</p><p>Hermione thinks again of the Flock, of spreading her dark lipstick over chapped lips, of killing them all-</p><p>“She’s over here!”</p><p>The girl lets out a little scream, then tries to break out of Hermione’s hold, but she’s weak and panicked, and by the time two masked Flock men turn the corner she’s still in Hermione’s grip, shivering and crying in earnest now. Her tear-filled eyes focus on Hermione when one of the men wrench her away. “You will rot in hell!”</p><p>”I’m sure I will” Hermione says mildly. One of the men turns back to her. “Finally seen the light Granger?”</p><p><em>We went to Hogwarts together,</em> Hermione thinks. But she can’t place him. Can’t see him in any house colour. <em>What does it matter anyway,</em> she thinks, and inclines her head. <em>Yes</em> and <em>No</em>, depending on what angle he caught.</p><p>She follows at a distance as they drag Ludmijlla to the main stone hall. Her feet are bare and white. Hermione looks at them as they pass into the hall. There’s torches of fire lit along the long walls. The tables are covered in exotic fruits, and roasted animals. Swans, pigs, a side of what looks like a whole lamb. At the far end of the door the Flock has stood three stout barrels of wine. The drums echo all around, but no one seems to actually be playing them, the sound issuing from the air itself.</p><p>Hermione has been half afraid that she would spot Bellatrix in one of the contorted heaps on the center tables. Muggle men and women writhe or stare into the middle distance as the Flock uses them. But when Hermione makes herself look properly she sees Bellatrix is deep in conversation with her wand-maker at a far couch. The woman is flashy and fashionable in the same way Hermione imagines Bellatrix must have been in her youth. She’s also one of those taught on the tortured confessions of Ollivander. One who thought it was alright to learn the ancient secrets of wand lore that way. She touches Bellatrix’s knee every so often as they speak. </p><p><em>I am the price,</em> Hermione thinks again, and for the first time the thought has the flavour of vengeance. </p><p>But still, she makes herself turn away from Bellatrix. How would she begin? What would she even say? Instead she moves around the shadowy perimeter of the hall, sometimes watching her, and sometimes watching her surroundings. Ludmijlla gets her throat cut pretty quickly. Hermione catches snatches of the small argument that breaks out among the men who had her, even as the girl is busy dying, blood dripping from her wound. The throng of dancers thickens as they drop her and pick up their sloshing goblets.</p><p>A hand on her arm arrests her on her second turn around the hall. She turns, half expecting Bellatrix, and a little relieved to find just another Flock wizard in his finest dress robes. Then she looks a little closer.</p><p>”Oh. It’s you.” She says. Pole keeps staring at her. He's used some sort of concealer on his spots. The color is a shade too dark. His hand has drifted to the butt of his wand, tucked into his belt. She turns back to Bellatrix just to make sure-</p><p>“Ah you saw that” Pole clears his throat, obviously aiming for conspiratorial “Fang’s been trying to bang her for months. She reckons tonight’s the night.”</p><p>Something prickles nastily under Hermione’s skin at that. <em>Tonight is it?</em> But she turns away from the woman still whispering in Bellatrix’s ear, and back to Pole. “And you? How’s tonight’s little party treating you?” She touches the front of his chest, then lets her hand drift ever so slowly down, a little shocked at her daring. “Stuck this in anyone yet?”</p><p>Pole swallows visibly, but his features cloud with confused lust. “You want to be first mudblood?” </p><p>Hermione leans closer.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>The real trick of course is getting rid of the body.</p><p>She’d performed all the other bits perfectly. Had led Pole to a little grove of trees away from the glow of the house. Had let him slobber all over her face and neck. And then had used the steak knife she’d taken from a roast bird carcass to gut him. It felt remarkably good. Hermione was pretty sure it wasn’t meant to feel this good.</p><p>But now she has his wand and a good chunk of his hair jammed into the toe of her left shoe. If only his wand would perform a little better for her. It did alright with shifting a bunch of earth from underneath the trees. It even let her levitate the body in there, landing it with only the smallest of thumps. But it wouldn’t let her turn him into old yellow bones. Wouldn’t produce so much as a spark to incinerate him.</p><p>Hermione stands in the cool summer night a moment longer, looking at his skinny limbs, then decides to hell with it, and dumps the earth back on top of him. She regrows the grass carefully, even adding a few tiny daisies.</p><p>The feast has shifted into another gear when she gets back to the main hall. Most of the muggles are dead or dying in earnest, and the Flock has turned on itself. Hermione sees Yardley pumping his hips into one of those cold blonde graduates that Beauxbaton sends them, and quickly averts her eyes. At least he would have been too busy to see her with Pole.</p><p>Bellatrix is gone, so is the wand-maker. Hermione tries desperately hard not to dwell on that. </p><p>She considers staying longer. But she has what she came for. An escape hatch and a vague plan forming just out of the corner of her eye. Like a soap bubble. Holographic in the late evening light.</p><p>Her bedroom is dark when she finally gets there. She toes off her shoes and pushes them far underneath the bed. Slides Pole’s wand under her pillow under the guise of fluffing it. She’s probably being ridiculous and over-cautious. Who would watch a lowly mudblood? Especially one as good and quiet as her?  It's only now that she starts to feel hot and cold all over. Her fingernails feel packed with earth and her bones too heavy. She killed someone. Not with an Unforgivable. Not by effect. With her own hands. It had taken Pole ages to die. He kept reaching for her, gurgling pitifully, and Hermione had kept jerking the knife around, even though her arms burned from the strain.</p><p>Getting into bed in her new dress is a terrible idea, but she does it anyway. She likes that the fabric scratches against her skin. Everything else is too dark and quiet. Even the drums have stopped.</p><p>She sees herself at eleven, sorted into Gryffindor and so happy she could throw up. Sees herself at seventeen, dancing with Ronald at a wedding. Nineteen and in love with Bellatrix. And now here. Coming to the end of whatever this life was.</p><p> </p><p>*</p><p> </p><p>Breakfast is subdued the next day. </p><p>Most of the Flock are nursing cups of tea and mulish expressions. The feasts' waste is mostly gone, cleaned by unseen house-elves. Hermione wonders what they do with the bodies. She should have slipped Pole in there. Let him go to whatever mass grave the Death Eaters were patrons of this month.</p><p>The high table is empty. Hermione feels a jealous lurch in her stomach, picturing smeared lipstick across the pale expanse of Bellatrix's white skin, then remembers the big gathering would likely have a smaller council to precede it. Just Voldemort’s nearest and dearest. Breathing gets a little easier again after that thought.</p><p>She sits alone again, sipping her own cup of coffee, and watching for Yardley. He doesn't appear by the time her cup is empty. Hermione decides her newfound clarity will let her explore the grounds in daylight. She's wearing another outfit from her wardrobe. A low silk coat over a black dress. It garners her a few more glances than usual, but she ignores them, stepping quickly out of the entrance hall and on to the grounds.</p><p>There's no visible fence to this park, but in Hermione's experience, that doesn't mean there isn't one.</p><p>She walks quickly along the path, ignoring the trappers, who have set up near the small kitchen gardens, practicing their rope-craft. Cecil alone looks perky. She doesn't participate in feasts herself, and though she doesn't forbid her team, she never suffers slack from them the morning after. <em>Perhaps in another life I might have liked her,</em> Hermione thinks as she often does. But the thought is foolish. Cecil has made a choice, just like the rest of them.</p><p>The path turns into a lane after an hour or so. It even has a worn signpost, put up by the long-extinct local muggle council to help hikers. Hermione stares at the rusting metal. She shouldn't have gotten this far. This is well outside the grounds of the old Hall.</p><p><em>Maybe the tonic was also a tether,</em> she thinks. It feels dimly how her answers in class were. She knew she was right, even if she hadn't read it exactly in a book. She'd put the pieces together. For a moment she almost feels the wood of her favorite table in the Hogwarts library, Harry's frowning face, and Ron's dreamy one-</p><p><em>No.</em> She says to herself very firmly. <em>Not now. That is gone.<br/>
</em></p><p>Turning away and back to the hall is one of the hardest walks she's ever taken. It feels perversely like turning away from Hogwarts itself. But she makes herself. Even when the roofs of the grand old building come into sight she doesn't slow her pace. She looks at the grove of trees Pole is buried in. She doesn't stop until she's closed the door on her own room.</p><p>She knows she's dithering, but she can't help it. She makes a collection of aborted movements. She opens the heavy window. Contemplates jumping and breaking her neck with a head as clear as a bell. Looks at her bed, the wand presumably still stowed in one of the pillowcases, and the shoes full of Pole's hair. There's no way anyone is letting her near any of the ingredients for a polyjuice, but it doesn't hurt to have options.</p><p>None of it has the <em>scale</em> that she wants - the scope her teenage self would have found without a second thought Hermione realises finally. She's been locked up so tightly for so long, she's forgotten how to really unfurl. How to strike where it would really hurt.</p><p>The move must be grand. If nothing else she wants to wipe out Bellatrix's faction, the Flock, for all she's seen them do, and all they are capable of doing yet. <em>Bellatrix herself?</em> Hermione's heart contracts at the thought. She'll walk across that bridge when she gets there.</p><p>And besides- the next tonic could be real again for all she knows. Someone has given her a very real, but very small window. She cannot waste it. She must not.</p><p><em>The meeting is </em><em>the obvious target, </em>Hermione thinks. Whoever bungled her potion surely had this in mind - a clear star- and she wonders why she hasn't seen it before. Not just the Flock, but all the major factions would be there. The Gray Gentlemen, the Horde and a smattering of smaller outfits. Voldemort himself would come out of his habitual isolation to be there. Perhaps she could-</p><p>There's a commotion somewhere around the side of the house. Yelling. She sees a group of Death Eaters running.</p><p>
  <em>Shit.</em>
</p><p>She closes the windows quickly, but not before she catches snatches of clipped instructions "...freshly buried.. search the wider grounds...not twelve hours dead"</p><p>The glass is cool against her forehead. Getting her breath to return to normal takes longer than she'd like, but she manages it. She has to get downstairs. Has to be seen loitering, touching the stones in the entrance hall, or whatever other eerie shit she did when she was full of potion and in a fog so thick she couldn't think straight, let alone stab a teenager.</p><p>Yardley isn't in the hall by the time she drifts to sit at one of the tables and spills a half-full glass of pumpkin juice left-over from breakfast. She drags her fingers through the sticky puddles, trying to create shapes. Flowers, eyes, hearts - anything really. She hums to herself and wonders whether she's laying it on too thick.</p><p>All around her the Flock is in sharp motion. The head table is full, and Hermione watches out of the corner of her eye as they update Bellatrix on the situation.</p><p>"And he was?" Bellatrix's voice is cool, her glasses are perched on her nose, and she's obviously annoyed at having been disturbed. Around her, her lieutenants look uncomfortable.</p><p>"A relatively new recruit sir" The wizard stammers. "We suspect-"</p><p>"This close to a gathering? It's obviously a hazing." Bellatrix snaps, and looks back down at her notes "Greyback does love his little games. Distracts his lot from their nerves I expect."</p><p>"But sir-" The man continues, then freezes as Bellatrix's eyes flick to him once more. His nose has begun to bleed. Hermione feels something disturbingly like nostalgia. Then Bellatrix's eyes shift over to her. Hermione stares back down into the puddle by her finger, feeling the heat of that look, like a brand searing into her skin, willing herself not to move, not to breathe too quickly-</p><p>"We're in a slightly better position than the mutt - but not by much." Bellatrix finally continues, and Hermione hears the stumbling steps of the wizard with the nosebleed. He passes her table, mopping at his face with the sleeve of his robe.</p><p>"We've done plenty to be proud of sir" One of Bellatrix's men ventures with the proper amount of caution in his voice. Hermione peeks up in time to see Bellatrix fixing him with a haughty look.</p><p>"This is not Hogwarts Fletcher. The Dark Lord won't be giving out any house points because we've<em> tried our very hardest</em>." Bellatrix's voice has dropped into a hypnotic sing-song "He wants the Resistance done - and until they are a footnote in his history he will be displeased with us."</p><p>"But the pogroms, and the election we won him in France-" One of the men on her right splutter.</p><p>"Lovely asides - but Potter continues to attack. The Dark Lord will have his head and no one else's." Even Bellatrix sounds a touch exasperated admitting this. She rubs her left eyebrow with one finger absently - and Hermione raises her own face a little more, like a moth to a flame, trying to catalogue the unconscious gesture, something not rooted in cruelty, but in humanity. And then Bellatrix looks up. Their eyes meet.</p><p>"Leave me" Bellatrix says to the men around her, in a completely different tone of voice. "<em>Leave</em>. Now. " She says again, and this time her voice cuts through the whole room.</p><p>Hermione fights not to let her panic show, as Bellatrix's most trusted wizards gather up their papers and shuffle past her table. They file for the door with the rest at something that isn't quite a jog, but wants to be. The great hall is quiet once the door closes. The day outside is sliding into afternoon. She still holds Bellatrix's eyes in the mulish way she's used to. It's harder without the tonic dulling her reactions to the other witch.</p><p>"Hermione?" Bellatrix approaches her slowly, as if she were some easily spooked animal. A bird on a branch. A horse with madness shining in the whites of its eyes. She takes a seat on the wooden bench next to Hermione. She's frowning. Her hand hovers for a moment, then comes to rest on top of Hermione's where it's stilled in the spilled juice. The flare of their connection is like an iron chain on Hermione's heart. "Is everything alright?"</p><p><em>She doesn't know about Pole</em>, Hermione thinks - <em>she doesn't even suspect</em> - with something like relief. <em>But she will if you don't do something soon</em>. Bellatrix could have her room searched - she had before. In those years she'd mostly been looking for sharp things, and ropes, and heavy stones - but wouldn't she wonder when they brought her a wand from a murdered boy and a chunk of his hair. Wouldn't she just look at Hermione in a whole new light? Wouldn't she just increase the dosage so Hermione was comatose?</p><p>Hermione nudges her fingers aside. Brushes her thumb along the side of Bellatrix's palm. Then, giving a quiet apology to everyone that was dear to her at Hogwarts, leans her face into the crook of Bellatrix's neck. Inhales her smoky still-familiar scent, feels her pulse with her cheek. Even closes her eyes for half a second.</p><p>Bellatrix inhales sharply. Her fingers clutch at Hermione's hand. Then she seems to master herself. Hermione draws back, mostly willingly. Bellatrix's eyes are huge and black. Hermione allows herself something she hasn't done in years, she's leaning forward, leaning towards that sharp mouth-</p><p>Bellatrix turns her head. It looks like she's bitten down on something sour. Her nostrils flare. <em>"No."</em> She chokes out, and Hermione draws back, heart pounding fast again, but Bellatrix's hand is still like a vice around her own. "Come. Somewhere more private." She says, her cheeks going a lovely pink, a shade Hermione had forgotten all about. What else has she forgotten about in all these years? Bellatrix stands quickly, almost pushing the table and Hermione away from her.</p><p>Then she watches Hermione stand, watches her readjust her rumpled coat around herself, and wrinkles her nose when Hermione wipes the juice on her sleeve. Hermione almost kisses her then. She'd forgotten that expression too. But Bellatrix has already turned sharply, and is leading the way out of the hall, and up the stairs through the deserted house- <em>the Flock must have taken to the air in fear</em> Hermione thinks with amusement - even as she wonders where on the grounds they've gotten to-</p><p>"Here" Bellatrix says, using the lightest of touches on her hip to pilot Hermione to a door. The room beyond it is much the same as hers. Tapestry-clad and ancient and huge. She looks to the distorted panels of Tudor windows at the oddly familiar view.</p><p>"It's right above your room. It always is." Bellatrix says rather quickly and with something strained in her voice. "I like to keep an eye on you."</p><p>She makes a little complicated motion with her hand, and the wooden floor underneath their feet becomes opaque. Hermione sees a birds-eye view of her own bedroom, messy as she left it an hour ago. Her eyes snag on her left pillow, which looks innocent enough from this angle - but if someone were watching last night-</p><p>"To make sure I don't hurt myself?" Hermione asks before she can help it. <em>There</em>. Her first words to Bellatrix in years! Gone, just like that.</p><p>Bellatrix must know it too, because she takes half a moment longer to reply than is really necessary. "No" Her voice is smooth. Too smooth. "More of a selfish comfort I'm afraid."</p><p>Hermione scoffs, toeing the invisible floor, eyeing her tangled coverlet and trying to work out why she isn't more upset about this "Can't be much to look at these past few years."</p><p>"And yet I look" Bellatrix says quietly. The floor reappears. Hermione looks up. Bellatrix's face is blank, but Hermione can see how tense her shoulders are. Can see how she raises her chin a little, a parlor trick of both Black sisters when they're on uneven footing. Hermione almost smiles. She's forgotten how easy it is to read Bellatrix when they are alone. How easily everything comes- like water following a predestined course. Only the other way was hard- the watching Bellatrix from afar, the living without her all these years-</p><p>Bellatrix is still watching her, but her eyes seem to have snagged on her neck. "What happened there?" She asks, stepping closer, a slow tiger.</p><p>Hermione touches her neck, has to palm it all over until she finds a spot of pain. A bruise. Pole had really been going for it. Bellatrix still watches her closely.</p><p>"Ran into a tree" Hermione says as nonchalantly as she can. It's a stupid answer, paper-thin-</p><p>"May I?" Bellatrix asks, already hovering a hand in front of her, taking another step that brings her definitely into Hermione's personal space. Hermione swallows and nods.</p><p>Bellatrix's palm is cold against the skin of her neck. She curves her whole hand flat against Hermione's throat. Her nails come to rest at Hermione's nape, vaguely sharp half-moon suggestions. Hermione breathes in sharply. Bellatrix's black eyes flick up to hers, then back down, stopping at her mouth. She looks like she wants to ask-</p><p>Hermione leans in and kisses her. Brings her hands up to cup Bellatrix's face. Waits for her to take control.</p><p>But she doesn't.</p><p>So Hermione keeps kissing, keeps probing the seal of Bellatrix's lips with her tongue, runs her hands through the surprisingly soft hair at Bellatrix's nape. She should probably stop. Bellatrix is not reciprocating as much as she's doing a bang on impression of a statue, but their horcrux bond has Hermione now, or at least that what she tells herself. Their horcrux bond, always at the heart of it - like an iron chain - all the other stuff just braided over the top, like algae swaying in the current. Why has she left this so long? Why haven't they been touching every day since Hogwarts fell? Why isn't Bellatrix responding- instead of just standing there like a stiff-</p><p>"What is it?" Hermione asks, breaking the kiss, and attempting to push away. Bellatrix's grip is like iron at her throat. "What's the matter?"</p><p>Bellatrix's eyes are dark. There's a faint flush on her cheeks and her lips are red where Hermione kissed her.</p><p>"You're frightened." She says, and her voice is rough "You're so frightened I can taste it. One last time Hermione: what is the matter?"</p>
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